# [MC] Multiple Inhertiance

Matthew Sanderson (m.sanderson@student.anu.edu.au)
Wed, 10 Apr 1996 17:18:49 PDT

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    At 2:24 PM 4/10/96, Jefferson M. Dubrule wrote:
    >--- Seth I. Rich wrote:

    <snip>

    >>- Ability to call a specific verb on a -specific- parent
    >
    >Well, you can't do this NOW, can you?  If I have a parentage tree such that
    >foo == parent(bar) == parent(parent(baz)), you can't pass() to a verb on foo
    >without
    >going through bar, can you?

    He said 'parent', not 'ancestor'. There is no need to select which
    _parent's_ verb you are going to pass() to if there's only one parent.
    With arbitrarily many parents pass()ing introduces a real problem: if
    several parents define a verb with the same name (a very likely scenario),
    which one do you pick?
    The point stands.

    Relying on the order of objects in .parents for this choice seems to me to
    be extremely iffy...

    Also: I don't see why you think chparent() becomes obsolete under a
    multiple-inheritance server. This would mean that if my generic foo has
    parents A, B, C, ... Z and I want to make it only a parent of BAZ (perhaps
    I'm recycling it), I would have to remove_parent each of the 26 parents,
    then add_parent BAZ. Ick.
    chparent( {[parent, [parent, ...]]} ) would seem much more intuitive and
    efficient to me...

    Matthew Sanderson
    m.sanderson@student.anu.edu.au
    The Australian National University, Canberra.

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